Sony's Barbie was originally intended as a girl-boss Lego Movie, per Juno's Diablo Cody

Barbie spent years in purgatory before landing with Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie

By Emma Keates | July 7, 2023 | 8:53pm

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Sony's Barbie was originally intended as a girl-boss Lego Movie, per Juno's Diablo Cody

Barbie Screenshot: Warner Bros. Pictures

Despite the fact that it has now been over a year since those first iconic rollerblading photos set the internet into a neon-hued tizzy—not to mention the fact that we’re mere weeks from the thing’s actual release—we still don’t really know what the Barbie movie is about.

But what we do very much know is what it isn’t. It isn’t Greta Gerwig selling out (at least according to her) and it definitely isn’t an intentional political statement against Vietnam (at least according to a statement from Warner Bros.) It’s not a not “feminist or cool” Amy Schumer vehicle and it, sadly, isn’t a tool for Kendall Roy to finally break into the music scene, although Twitter is really choosing to believe that last one in recent days.

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Now, per Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody, we also know that it’s not a girl-boss-ified version of The Lego Movie, although it almost ended up that way in one of its many iterations. Before Greta Gerwig took the dream car’s wheel, Sony ran the IP through many different Hollywood talents—one of them being Cody—none of whom could make the vision, er, come to life. “I was literally incapable of turning in a Barbie draft. God knows I tried,” Cody told ScreenCrush (via Variety) around the time she exited the film in 2018.

Now, as Barbenheimer Friday looms, Cody is opening up about her experience working on the failed version of the film.

“I think I know why I shit the bed,” she said in a recent interview with GQ. “When I was first hired for this, I don’t think the culture had not embraced the femme or the bimbo as valid feminist archetypes yet. If you look up ‘Barbie’ on TikTok you’ll find this wonderful subculture that celebrates the feminine, but in 2014, taking this skinny blonde white doll and making her into a heroine was a tall order.”

“Given the feminist rhetoric of 10 years ago… I didn’t really have the freedom then to write something that was faithful to the iconography; they wanted a girl-boss feminist twist on Barbie, and I couldn’t figure it out because that’s not what Barbie is,” she continued, referencing a phase when Amy Schumer was still attached to the film.

The recency and undeniable success of The Lego Movie in 2014 also caused problems for Cody, who knew Sony execs were in the market for something similar. “Any time I came up with something meta, it was too much like what they had done,” she said. “It was a roadblock for me, but now enough time has passed that they can just cast [‘The Lego Movie’ antagonist] Will Ferrell as the antagonist in a real-life Barbie movie and nobody cares.”

We can’t say we’re entirely convinced Greta Gerwig’s interpretation won’t just be a yass-ified version of The Lego Movie, but either way, we’ll be seated.

Barbie premieres July 21 in theaters.